Cut Through the Design Fog

Cutting Through the Design Fog

Early concept development is challenging because teams lack clarity and alignment. Traditional methods, like unstructured brainstorming, often fail. This means we need a structured approach—not bureaucracy, but structure. We need a shared process that ensures everyone is aligned before we commit resources to the next step, which is usually engineering development.

That is where the Concept Space Model and the ADEPT Team Framework come in. The principles behind these models are grounded in decades of research and practices of what works.

Welcome to Quality during Design, the place to use quality thinking to create products others love, for less time, less money, and a lot less headache. I am your host, Dianna Deeney. I am a senior quality engineer with over 20 years in manufacturing and product development and author of Pierce the Design Fog. I help design engineers apply quality and reliability thinking throughout product development, from early concepts through technical execution. Each episode gives you frameworks and tools you can use. Want a little more? Join the Substack for monthly guides, templates, and Q&A where I help you apply these to your specific projects. Visit qualityduringdesign.com. Let us dive in.

Welcome back. We are talking about the Concept Space Model and the ADEPT Team Framework and how they can help you in concept development.

What to Focus On: The Concept Space Model

The Concept Space Model is what to focus on. Most teams align on the wrong things during concept development. They discuss technical architecture, feature lists, and implementation details before they have aligned on the fundamental questions.

The fundamental questions that should drive your concept development are:

• What are the targeted benefits, and which ones are we prioritizing over others?
• What potential problems should we avoid and design out?
• How does a user get from start to finish with our product?
• How do we help our users achieve their desired outcome with our product?

That is the Concept Space Model.

How to Co-Work: The ADEPT Team Framework

The ADEPT Team Framework is how to work together—a five-part method for effective team co-creation during concept development. Adept itself means being good at something. For the ADEPT Team Framework, it is an acronym:

• Align
• Discover
• Examine
• Prioritize
• Teamwork

If you just put the Concept Space Model on a whiteboard, you could draw it out, but you will still have problems getting information from your team. We want to co-work and create together, and that means we need to be intentional about it. Someone on the team needs to facilitate and lead the rest of the group through this ADEPT Team Framework process in order to have the types of co-work sessions that you need for concept development.

The ADEPT Team Framework helps facilitators plan and guide co-working sessions, ensuring alignment, idea generation, and prioritization. You can use this framework outside of the Concept Space Model. If you are using other quality tools, like a fishbone diagram, a process flow chart, and other visual team tools, you can certainly use the ADEPT Team Framework in those instances also. It is a helpful framework for you to use to lead teams through ideation and discovery.

Brainwriting and Common Understanding

What makes the framework so special, relevant, and actionable is really the middle parts. In the Discover phase, we use brainwriting—silent, timed idea generation—to avoid groupthink and ensure all voices are heard.

ainwriting is not unique to the ADEPT Team Framework; a lot of other people use it. You may have heard of brainwriting before or have done it. It is not unusual to do, and in fact, it is a commonly accepted practice. It works really well with the Concept Space Model and the other templates that are in Pierce the Design Fog.

In the Examine step, you really want to look at the ideas that everyone generated and examine them. But you do not want to examine them for judgment. You want to examine them for common understanding, ensuring that everybody has a shared understanding of the ideas that were generated. During the Examine step, we really do want to come to a common understanding because that will help us in the next step, which is Prioritize. In Prioritize, the team is either prioritizing what next steps to take or prioritizing some benefits or customer experiences that the design should focus on.

When you take this on, it is not difficult, and people respond to it really well, but it is a responsibility. People’s time is not free. You want to avoid just scheduling a meeting without any plan, without any idea of how you are going to get ideas and what you are going to do with them during concept development. You want to be respectful of everybody’s time and make it productive, fun, and meaningful.

The ADEPT Team Framework with the Concept Space Model and the other templates and models that are in Pierce the Design Fog are designed just for that: helping you and your team develop concepts and design together during concept development. After co-working with ADEPT, the result is shared understanding translated into design inputs that guide engineering. ADEPT is a repeatable process that empowers product managers, engineering leaders, and cross-functional teams.

Piercing the Design Fog

How do you get started with this? You start small. You do not need to transform your entire organization overnight. Pick one upcoming project and commit to spending one to two focused sessions on structured concept development using ADEPT.

Every team faces the design fog. The question is not whether it exists; it is whether you will pierce through it with intention or stumble through it hoping for the best. Your team is already spending time in concept development, whether you realize it or not. The question is whether you are spending it productively or just spinning in the fog. The ADEPT Team Framework and Concept Space Model give you the map. The rest is up to you.

Do you want next steps? Are you ready to pierce your design fog? Here is how to get started:

1. Read the full playbook, Pierce the Design Fog. It contains detailed templates, facilitation guides, and case studies.
2. Listen to the podcast series.
3. You can get the book and the podcast series at PierceThedesignfog.com.
4. Work with me. I help teams implement these frameworks. Visit DeeneyEnterprises.com.

This has been a production of Deeney Enterprises. Thanks for listening.